Leigh High School Newspaper

Guns on college campuses

For most people, college is two to four fun years of enjoying life with little responsibilities and studying subjects they actually enjoy. But college can also be a time of stress. According to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, more students are coming out of college today with anxiety and depression than ever before in history. This is because college can be so competitive. With the pressure of knowing a difference in grades could lead to a difference in their future, many students take classes extremely seriously. Add the accessibility of a loaded handgun, and high tensions, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

From January 2015 to October 2015, there were 52 shootings on college campuses. Granted, not every one of them was done by a college student with a concealed firearms license, but guns simply should never have been allowed on the campuses.

It only takes eight hours of training and a three page written test to obtain a concealed firearm license. You don’t even have to live in a state that allows concealed firearm licenses, you just have to mail an application to a state that does. You then have to go to a training facility and train with a handheld gun for eight hours and take the written test before… BAM. Licensed. This makes it too easy to obtain a gun.

“I don’t think guns should be allowed where there are large concentrations of people. It doesn’t matter the age, whether it’s a nursing home or a college campus, if there’s big concentrations of people there shouldn’t be weapons allowed, especially with stressed college students,” said senior Mary Manchester.

Of course, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun!” Right? Wrong. Only three percent of active shootings are stopped by a “good guy with a gun.” Not only are the “good guys with guns” not normally trained enough, but when the authorities come, they’re not going to wait and hear each shooter’s backstory before deciding who’s good and bad. They’re going to rid all potential danger in the environment, including the “good guy with a gun.”

The United States needs to take action to decrease the amount of school shootings. Whether it be implementing metal detectors inside of every building in every college (all 4,168 of them), or simply not putting the gun into a college kid’s hands, something needs to be done. It seems a little easier to just not let guns onto college campuses.